Partner

The DEA says that the Family has joined forces with Chapo Guzmán's gang; the former sells its meth and such in the US using the latter's network of American street gangs. 

Narco-Fashion

With an article titled, "PGR fashion show: Tell me what brand you use and I'll tell you what you traffic", Excélsior reports on the fashion tastes of Mexico's drug traffickers: 

The stereotype of the drug trafficker of years past with the sombrero, point boots, wide belts, open button-down and with accessories of gold with diamonds on the chest and hands is extinct, although perhaps among the cartel founders there remain a few [with such tastes], but the capos detained in the last year by federal authorities prefer to seem like California boys and use the brands in fashion with American teenagers. 

The article says that the Hollister, Abercrombie, and Ed Hardy are the most popular brands for young narcos. It also says that one's position in a gang can be extrapolated from his clothing: the narco-juniors (or young, rising operators) dress like businessmen, the older lieutenants are flashier, while the hit men typically dress like denizens of poorer neighborhoods. 

Calderón and Zelaya

Even if it doesn't do a whole lot to fix the situation in Honduras, at least the Zelaya-Calderón meeting produced one indelible image. 

Pew Findings

More on the recently released Pew Global Attitudes Projects to come in future posts, but there were some interesting finding's on global warming buried in the reports second half. Eighty-eight percent of Chinese and 85 percent of Indian respondents agreed to the proposition of paying higher prices to address climate change, the highest levels of any of the countries surveyed. Similarly, 84 percent of Indians and 82 percent of Chinese said that protecting the environment was worth slower growth and higher unemployment, figures which were once again the highest of any of the more than 30 countries surveyed. 

This all strikes me as at least a bit unexpected, because the two nations' reliance on fossil fuels to drive their economies is often painted as the principal obstacle to an effective global effort to combat climate change. You could argue that it is precisely because neither nation has done a lot to address the environmental harm of its recent growth that they are both so pro-environment. That is, essentially they are dealing in the abstract; whereas US respondents answer with the uncertaint impact of the recently passed cap-and-trade bill running through their mind, Chinese and Indians are basically being asked to offer a thumbs up or down on the environment, in which case it's a lot easier to go thumbs up. But another odd finding would seem to a contradict that, at least as a blanket explanation: the nations diverge sharply on whether or not global warming is a serious problem: 30 percent of Chinese say it is, the lowest number on the poll. For India, 67 percent say that it is a serious problem, the fifth-highest score. 

At this point, I throw my hands up and marvel at Brazil, where 90 percent of the population says that global warming is a serious problem, more than 20 points higher than the second-place finisher (Argentina). Did Lula just finish a big climate change public information campaign or something?

More AMLO Speculation

Lots of commentary on AMLO's apparent announcement this weekend that he will seek the presidency in 2012 in El Universal today. (I say apparent because the use of "we" instead of "I" was conspicuous.) Here's Carlos Loret: 

For a powerful and power-hungry man, such as AMLO, the balance from 2006 to 2009 was negative, but didn't reach political bankruptcy. He's not politically dead, but he is gravely wounded (a metaphorical coroner would be shocked at the number of self-inflicted wounds). 

In this context, he announced that we will again seek the presidency in three years, in a position of much greater disadvantage than he had three years before the controversial contest in 2006. Then he appeared to be the favorite and the question was: what would have to happen for him not to take over Los Pinos? Today the equation is dramatically different and the question is flipped: what would have to happen for AMLO to be able to take over Los Pinos?

The former mayor has placed himself before the present president in a sort of political see-saw, in which he has no control over the balance: in so far as Calderón (the individual, not his party) does poorly, AMLO does well, and if the president does well, AMLO poorly, but not vice versa. Which is to say, López Obrador depends on the failure or success of Calderón, but the performance of the president has nothing to do with his self-proclaimed "legitimate" antagonist. 

And here's Ricardo Alemán: 

[T]he PRD only has two real candidates for 2012: Marcelo Ebrard and López Obrador. No one else. And if today they toss AMLO from the party, not only will they slice a vital portion of votes from the PRD --calculated at between 5 and 8 percent-- but they will also do away with the all of the hopes of Marcelo Ebrard. Which is to say that alone or separated, Marcelo and AMLO are electorally dead --along with the PRD-- in 2012. 

Within the PRD it is clear to everyone --and always with a strict pragmatic vision-- that the future of the PRD in 2012 is linked to the Ebrard-AMLO connection. It's the only formula capable of confronting the PRI and/or the PAN in 2012. That pragmatism sets forth, nevertheless, some fundamental question. Will Marcelo and AMLO fight for the presidential candidacy of the PRD? The answer is yes. They will do anything for the nomination. AMLO has already announced. And if today the power and advantage is with Ebrard, nothing is written in stone. 

What comes next is that the thread of what happened [at the recent PRD convention] in Morelia. The dispute for the candidacy should not or must not necessarily effect a divorce. The dispute is for a presidential candidacy. But after the fight the defeated party will join forces with the winner and they will walk together. Only together, for basic survival --not for unity-- will they be able to win power. Otherwise they are dead. That will be the re-foundation [of the PRD]. But one question will remain until the end. Will the tricky and megalomaniacal López Obrador respect the agreements? We'll see.

Confidence Game

Consumer confidence in Mexico is at a ten-month high. With the economy and (more importantly) perceptions of it rebounding, it'll be interesting to see if the PAN's glut of poor electoral showings continues in state and local races over the next couple of years. 

Lazy Hump Day

It's been a hot, boring Wednesday, much more suited to heading to a water park or lying in bed for hours on end than to blogging (not that the latter two are mutually exclusive, mind you). Hence the lack of activity in this space. The only thing I've seen worth repeating today: Pat Leahy makes a bunch of new friends in the Mexican government. 

Panista Polling

According a survey from Milenio, PAN voters were hesitant to blame a single person for the defeat on July 5. Slightly less than 14 percent said the loss was Calderón's fault, while slightly more than 14 percent said the blame should go to Germán Martínez. Almost half of those polled said that the state leaders in each entity should shoulder the blame. And I'm not sure if this is good or bad news for the PAN, but 63 percent of those polled didn't know who César Nava was. It's bad news because it means he arrives without any prestige, but it also means the campaign against him and his somewhat embarrassing behavior during the election (all but begging to be the leader of the PAN deputies) didn't create a lot of baggage. 

Burying Hatchets

The PRD has agreed on a unified legislative agenda, and its deputies have agreed to vote as one bloc. Announcements like this don't completely put the AMLO-Oliva-Juanito-Brugada-et cetera turmoil in the past, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. 

Furthermore, with the installation of perredista Carlos Navarrete as the chamber's president, the PRI is making strides to create a voting alliance with the PRD in the senate. For its past, the PAN says that Navarrete was installed by mutual agreement among all three major parties, and that with the presidential veto and the its plurality, the legislative agenda can't be stuffed down the PAN's throat. 

Mercs in Mexico

Excélsior pointed out yesterday that the Mérida Initiative combined with Mexico's diverse security needs has created a fertile opportunity for mercenary groups like DynCorp and Xe, née Blackwater. Such companies already operate drones and other security programs along the border, and we can, according to the author, expect to see mercs training Mexican troops and perhaps even protecting oil pipelines. 

The article that could have been quite informative had more than two people been interviewed and a few objective (hell, even one would have been a huge improvement) statistics been included; unfortunately, it was just the above kernel of an idea, expressed in about 50 words, stretched out into more than a thousand. 

Results Are In

Mexico's anti-smoking laws have been in place more than a year now, and Mitofsky finds no significant change in smoking habits. The percentage of people identifying themselves as smokers has bounced between 22 and 25 percent, but hasn't shown a downward tendency. The number of cigarettes per day for smokers has declined, but only from 7.9 to 7.7. Of course, it's a only a year in, and the sort of wide societal change one would hope for would seem to take decades, if not generations. Furthermore, the benefit of smoking laws doesn't lie only in preventing smoking, but also in protecting the well being and comfort of the non-smoker, which is much harder to measure. 

Mexico's Rights Abuses

Chabat weighs in on recent rights abuses:

Since Calderón's government unleashed its offensive drug traffickers eleven days into his term, it has been repeated in official circles that what was sparked was a war in which drug traffickers use all types of weapons, as in any war. 

The argument for the government is that the battle isn't only for the streets with high-power weapons but also that drug traffickers have a media strategy through which they seek to delegitimize governmental action. And the truth is that there's a lot of truth to this argument. If not, how would you explain the paid ads in newspapers from the Family, the narco-posters in which the government is accused of favoring one cartel to the detriment of another, or the narco-protests in Monterrey against the participation of the army in that fight? In this strategy you could also include the violent executions of members of rival groups that seek to terrify their adversaries but also generate a climate of confusion among the population that eventually leads the government to change its drug-combating policies. 

This is a bit off-topic, but one way in which the Mexican government has failed in its media strategy is the musical chairs of primary public enemies. For a long time, the Zetas were the biggest threat to the government. Later, with Operation Clean-up and the assassination of Edgar Millán, it was the Beltrán Leyvas. At other times, it's been Chapo Guzmán. Presently, it's the Family. All of that undermines popular confidence in the government; why should I believe that the Family is such a big threat if in three months surely one of its competitors will be more of a menace, according to official sources? A more consistent rhetorical approach would be a helpful upgrade for the next president. 

Back to Chabat: 

Against this backdrop, a couple of days ago the Secretary of Defense launched a worrying accusation that criminals used the National Commission on Human Rights to malign the fight against drug trafficking through presenting baseless complaints of violation of human rights. The accusation from the Army comes in a context of rising criticism of human rights abuses committed by Mexican security agencies in its combat against drug traffickers by organizations like Human Rights Watch and from the announcement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that a report on the performance of the Mexican government on this issue is forthcoming. 

It's likely that, in effect, drug traffickers are using the issue of human rights to undermine the legitimacy of the anti-drug strategy of the Mexican government. Nevertheless, believing that all the complaints on the issue are a product of media war between the drug traffickers and the government is akin to not seeing the forest for the trees. 

Thinking that drug traffickers are capable of manipulation not only the CNDH but also international NGOs and even the US State Department sounds incredible. There is a real human rights problem that must be addressed with all the resources of the Mexican state.

Coming Countertrend

Analysts wonder if the Latin America's "pink tide" could be receding:

Chile, Uruguay and Brazil are the three countries in the region that best epitomise the mellow, well-behaved left that the international right is willing to praise from time to time – as opposed to Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia. Their governments are seen as financially responsible, have a good number of socially-friendly policies and the three presidents – Michelle Bachelet, Tabaré Vázquez and Lula – are both respected abroad and very popular at home.

The three countries are also in the midst of presidential election campaigns. Uruguayans will be going to the polls in October and Chileans in December, and while the Brazilian election is set for October 2010, the campaign is already in its initial stages. One could rightfully suppose that the left is cruising to victory. Strikingly though, the frontrunners are all centre-to-right.

I got to this piece through the Latin Americanist, which came to the following (rather odd) conclusion:

Should center-right candidates win the presidency then other moderate leaders on the left may become less centrist in order to consolidate their power. Barry Goldwater famously said that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” yet the last thing Latin America could afford are a set of leaders amassed on the far part of either side of the political spectrum.

Maybe I'm reading to much into this, but that seems as though the election of rightist groups is being proactively fingered as the cause of extremist drift. But the transfer of power from one ideological group to another is a natural, essential part of politics. If an aspiring strongman uses a Serra win to justify his anti-democratic practices, no one in Brazil should be blamed for that. 

Press Under Siege

The Fundación Manuel Buendía reports that since the beginning of 2008, 17 journalists have been killed in Mexico. Additionally, there have been 365 acts of aggression against media outlets. 

Assessing the CNDH

According to a poll of more than 6,000 Mexicans who submitted a complaint to the National Commission on Human Rights (CNDH) this year, 77 percent said that the service was excellent, while another 17 percent said it was good. Of course, the CNDH carried out the poll itself, which suggests that objectivity may have been a bit lacking. 

On the other hand, a handful of independent NGOs recently said that the CNDH is one of the most expensive and least effective commissions in Latin America. Under José Luis Soberanes, the budget has increased by 300 percent in a decade, with 70 percent of the funds used to pay staff, but the organization hasn't become a titan of rights. In 2008, the critics point out, in more than half of the complaints, the CNDH determined that no rights violation had been committed. 

Another Hit for the Family

Over the weekend, federal forces surrounded a church in Apatzingán, where congregants attended a mass to celebrate the fifteenth birthday of a relative of La Tuta, leader of the Family. La Tuta, whose real name is Servando Gómez, was not in attendance (one suspects that given the recent arrests of those close to him, he's cutting down on public appearances), but authorities did arrest one of his lieutenants, Miguel Ángel Beraza Villa, La Troca. Evidently, some 4,500 psychotropic pills were seized "in the temple and the area surrounding it". That makes you wonder if the suspects were using the church as a factory for production, or if they had one nearby, or if, for some reason, someone was driving around with 4,500 illegal pills in their car. 

Update: Religious authorities condemn the arrest during a mass. 

Dying Businesses

Reforma reports that the small and medium-sized companies have been the most affected by the crisis. Almost 4,000 businesses with between two and five employees have crashed this year, while almost two thousand with somewhere from six to 50 employees have gone under. 

Tea Leaves

Leo Zuckermann wrote last month that if Calderón places PRI-friendly cabinet ministers in positions of prominence in coming months, that would be a sign that he will be doubling down on cooperation (rather than confrontation) with the PRI. This could be a sign: the incoming PAN deputy caucus will invite Agustín Carstens and Fernando Gómez-Mont, both respected by the PRI, to participate in a legislative planning session at the end of the month. Evidently, programs that alleviate poverty and strengthen the recovery will be the priorities. 

Important Visitor

Tomorrow, Manuel Zelaya will be traveling from Managua to Mexico to visit with Calderón. Don't tell Jim DeMint that one of the US's most stalwart Latin American allies is also a Zelaya man. 

Another Hero Fails Us

No, not David Ortiz*; Ernest Hemingway, who evidently spied for the KGB. I imagine it was more a product of anti-fascism than a rabid pro-Stalinism, but nonetheless, I'll never read Nick Adams the same way. I once read about a conversation between he and John Dos Passos during the Spanish Civil War in which Dos Passos expresses disillusionment about the motives and tactics of the Republicans, and Hemingway responds dismissively, with something to the effect of, "This is a battle of us versus them; whose side are you on?"

Incidentally, the article linked above refers to Somerset Maugham as "forgotten" after mentioning his relationship with British intelligence. Forgotten by whom? I hope that's not true. 

*At this point, the only slugger for whom I think there is a reasonable possibility that he maybe didn't use steroids is Albert Pujols. His numbers aren't totally off-the-wall (so much as they are consistently really good), nor have they jumped around wildly, nor has is he obscenely muscle-bound. It would be nice if there were one star from the past 15 years whose numbers were legit. 

Odious Phrases

One thing that makes my expatriate-ness always hit home is when a new term I've never actually heard cross anyone's lips suddenly starts appearing in every third line in fashionable magazines. Naturally, I miss out on the organic formation and development stage of such terms; they don't get to my ears (or eyes, as it were) until they have already reached a critical mass of media saturation, which always makes me feel like the US is leaving me behind, which in turn leaves me feeling vaguely melancholic. For that reason, and for the fact that people using the term seem do so to be hip more than to advance a particular point, I hate most of them.

One recent example: teachable moment. The "teachable" part of it sounds rather condescending, as if there were a cohort of learned who were disposed to teach me at every event that opens my perennially blinded eyes just enough to see the light they are shining. "Learnable moment" would be an improvement, though still quite annoying. The larger problem is that for an open-minded person, there is no moment that isn't learnable. I've seen the Sotomayor hearings and the Gates arrest, two episodes with nothing in common but race, described as teachable, but what event that dominates the news for a week doesn't leave a large swath of the populace looking at an issue from a different perspective? 

Cleaning House

The PRD has begun the process of expulsion of almost 3,000 party members who participated in the July elections as members of other parties. Oddly, a substantial number of these ran as PAN candidates (at least 400, according to the article). 

Crazy Allegation

The fugitive half-brother of Michoacán's governor is alleged to have ordered the murder of 12 federal police officers last month. The accusers are captured members of the criminal group the half-brother (Julio César Godoy) is said to be a part of (hence his fugitive status), La Familia. Evidently, they refer to him as Comandante Godoy. 

At this point, who knows what the truth is, but this smells sensational.